The Alberta School of Fine Arts presents their spring production, The Spoon River Anthology.

The story takes place in the grave yard of the fictional town of Spoon River.

Drama teacher and play director, Kelly Goutsis says that the show is unique.

"It is a collection of poems by Edgar Lee Masters that was published in 1915, that we have adapted into a short 1 act play. The play consists of a series of characters, each speaking from the grave about their lives and deaths", Goutsis says.

Goutsis says that the story is not as straightforward as other plays, where you can open up a book and tell the story through the characters dialogue.

The story of the Spoon River characters are told through a series of monologues, with the characters interacting with each other through the mentioning of the same events and referencing the same characters.

Goutsis says that the way they staged these scenes helps tell the characters stories.

"It is about creating the scenes, and the skies the limit with what we could do with staging and how we were going to tell these stories. It was great freedom, but also very challenging putting it all together, when there was no direction from a play-write as to how these stories should be told."

The production is put on by the advanced acting class which is made up of grade 10, 11 and 12 students that auditioned to be in the class.

The class worked on the production throughout the semester, working through the challenges of the production together.

"We figured it out together. From analyzing the poetry, to how we were going to stage it, to the costumes, and the technical elements. This was really a true collaboration between myself and the students, where everyone gets to feel ownership over the project," Goutsis says.

For more on the show, click here to view Eagle 100.9 page.

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